Study: If Town Buys Ellington Airport, Changes Would Be Necessary

August 22, 2010|BY LARRY SMITH, Special to The Courant

ELLINGTON — — If the town acquires Ellington Airport, its best course would be to reconfigure and lengthen the runway and hire someone else to run the day-to-day operations, according to the first draft of a study on the feasibility of the acquisition.

An informational meeting on the study took place Wednesday.

Town Planner Robert Phillips said the economic development commission decided to hire a consultant after new sewers installed near the airport made the area better suited for development. No decisions have been made, he said.

The commission wanted answers to questions about the future of the airport property, Phillips said. A grant from the Federal Aviation Administration is funding the $151,400 feasibility study, Phillips said.

Wednesday's meeting was to show the public what information has been gathered so far and get more input from residents and airplane owners, said Paul McDonnell of the engineering firm Clough Harbor & Associates of Albany, N.Y.

McDonnell said the airport sits on about 125 acres and has an 1,800-foot paved runway, which is the shortest in Connecticut. The airport serves small general aviation planes and helicopters and has a flight school.

McDonnell said that if the town purchased the airport, it would need to rebuild the runway, which is in poor condition. The study also recommends re-orienting the runway to run north-south and lengthening it to about 2,500 feet. A new runway would cost about $1 million, he added.

The Federal Aviation Administration now pays 95 percent of the cost of such projects, with the state paying 3.75 percent and the town 1.25 percent, McDonnell said. But the economy could affect how much federal and state funding would be available for such a project, he said.

Darren Mochrie of RKG Associates Inc. said the biggest revenue source from ownership of the airport probably would be fuel sales, and possibly leasing sites on the property for hangers and other places for owners to store their planes.

Mochrie said other scenarios for the sale of the land are unlikely in the current economy. Residential developers are having a hard time borrowing money to build housing, he said, and because the airport's location is remote, developers are less likely to want the property for industrial use, Mochrie added.

If town officials decide to further explore acquiring the airport, a real estate appraisal and a thorough environmental study would have to be done, McDonnell said.

A member of the audience asked if a runway long enough to support bigger airplanes could be built at Ellington Airport. McDonnell said to get federal funding the town would have to justify the need for the length of the runway. It is very unlikely that a runway longer than 3,200 feet could be built at the site, McDonnell said.